


don’t front for no stranger

by eleocharis



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence, HxH Secret Santa 2k17, Instances of Domestic Behaviour, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-20 01:34:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13136385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eleocharis/pseuds/eleocharis
Summary: Kurapika breaks. Leorio tries to help.





	don’t front for no stranger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [natodiangelo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/natodiangelo/gifts).



> merry christmas @natodiangelo!
> 
> i wish you, your family and friends a happy and safe holiday. best wishes for the coming year. i hope you enjoy this fic.
> 
> also, thank you to anthea @seaghost, for being my beta. without you, this wouldn't have been possible.

The Black Whale commands the sea even at night, parting hypnotising patterns languidly along the arrowhead of its wake. It is effortless as it is quiet; the painted perpetual smile divulges none of its secrets. A large seagull navigates the sky, hidden predators notwithstanding, and it screeches its worries into the air, a futile show of courage. They are merely carried away with the wind. The drunkard on deck lifts his arm, shaky and unbalanced, and shoots at the bird with a finger gun, providing lively sound effects.

"Pew pew pew, motherfucker,” he spits, but without saliva.

Kurapika contributes nothing, except faintly smoky plumes against the inky dark, silently surveying the churning foam catching moonlight. His eyes are unseeing, not regarding the dirt lapping onto the sleek surface of the transporter, but his demeanour is sharp as knives. His shoulders hike up further in the biting air, suspended, angular.

Kurapika indulges in a last deep inhale on the stubby cigarette, ash generously showering his fingers as he adjusts his grip and aligns the haphazardly rolled paper to his mouth. It burns his knuckles, his lungs, his everywhere. His heart constricts, chain and limitation winding like a boa around a filthy, helpless pig – an unwelcome reminder.

His flicks his cigarette into the ocean, watching the waves envelop the small orange light smouldering dully at its butt. Kurapika retreats to the lavish confines of the ship, door smoothly opening to reveal the snaking staircase he ascended in the warm radiance of the afternoon. The pathway is now dimly lit with an invading shaft of light.

He closes the door with a solid ‘clack’ and black engulfs the archway. The descent is dangerous by a layman’s standards but Kurapika’s eyes glow behind drying contacts. He takes to the steps in time to a Kurta childhood rhyme. It echoes against the hollows of his head, old ghosts settling into an easy, tranquil rhythm.

The vehicle has a circular porthole at the midway point, serving as impractical décor for its petite size, and it is as cute as the one in the tome he and Pario had pored over years ago. He halts in front of it, despite familiar anxiety clawing at his throat. Iridescence reflects back at him on the window, a blood-red that doesn’t lust for anarchy.

He breaks eye-contact when he registers a wetness on his cheek, whipping his head around to attention. He intakes some oxygen, lifting his foot to proceed down the steps. He notes the matte shadows swaying prettily on the walls and then there is a glinting rounded edge of smooth ceramic travelling towards his face. Kurapika inhales to scream.

 

* * *

 

 _“It’s so red,” she intones, tiny fists furling around the cotton blend of her shawl which is unravelling at the seams. Her voice is much too deep,_ no _, she shouldn’t even be able to talk. She is lying alongside himself, separated by a staining on the carpet floor, semi-liquid coagulating and melding the twisted wool tufts. Kurapika brings his hand to her but he has no hands in this sequence, incompetent fool. She blinks, and the light source turns off. On. Dark brown eyes like a mannequin stare back at him. Belatedly, Kurapika realises they are not her eyes, before he is surrounded by darkness again. On, off, on, off, on –_

Kurapika comes to with a start, abdominals instinctively tightening, jolting himself upright, eyes alert with a ruby sheen. An incessant electric beeping times the furious beating of his heart. The sterile white walls, characteristic of a hospital room, regards him.

A figure in a nurse’s gown walks in, a swift purposeful pacing, sound cushioned weakly by shoe covers.

“Oh, you’re awake,” Leorio says brightly, but at a measured volume. “I hope you are okay. Security found you lying at the bottom of the staircase to the deck, unconscious but breathing. We suspect you experienced a sudden onset of nausea – may be induced by lack of sleep, low blood sugar – and you rolled down the stairs. We placed you on rehydration therapy.”

Leorio analyses the heart monitor. “You’ve been out for 17 hours and you have a few minor bruises,” he adds hastily. “Catching up on sleep, I wager.” He turns to Kurapika and grins. It’s goofy as ever.

Leorio clears his throat; the stupid face disappears.

“I know you haven’t slept for days. Maybe ever since…” He pauses, grappling at the slipping façade of formality.

“Don’t,” Kurapika provides shortly.

Leorio gazes at him imploringly, something that Kurapika refuses to give a name to tinging the corners of his eyes. Kurapika looks away, viciously, bracing for the figurative impact he’s been anticipating ever since the nurse strode in.

“Let me take care of you,” Leorio pleads, overshadowed by Kurapika’s simultaneous, “No.”

“Why?” It is an exasperated sound, dejected, tired and not unfamiliar. Kurapika realises it is the same intonation the medical student used when he demanded to know Kurapika’s email address. It is without the static crackle, a tell-tale sign of a subpar phone and without a tiny screen reading ‘Playing Voicemail’. Instead, the lanky individual in question nags at him, in the flesh. Suddenly, Kurapika wants to laugh.

“You have to take care of the central medical clinic’s patients,” Kurapika says, schooling his amusement, “and yourself.”

Leorio subconsciously scratches his scruffy beard.

“At least,” Leorio pauses, and Kurapika breathes in and out, one and a two, “at least, _live with me_ so I can keep an eye on you when I can. Do you, do you even _eat_?”

“Yes, I eat, Leorio.”

“When was the last time you ate?”

Kurapika opens his mouth, brain quickly supplying an agreeable time interval as the drug induced cloudiness edges slowly out of his consciousness. Leorio glares down at him, with a professional strictness reserved for nonadherent patients on polypharmacy. Kurapika pointedly ignores this countenance, favouring a decorative pot plant slightly wilting in the stiffness of the air.

“Yesterday, around midday,” he says smoothly, tucking a strand of blonde behind his ear and he tilts his head a little to the side, feigning an expression of recollection.

“Bullshit.” Leorio unintentionally spits and surreptitiously attempts to wipe some that landed squarely on the back of his hand against his scrubs. “I have your blood tests,” he explains when Kurapika arches his eyebrow challengingly.

Kurapika huffs because _of fucking course_ and appraises Leorio’s profile in a show of mock consideration. The latter is still ridiculously tall, still wearing those ridiculously tiny glasses. Leorio curls and uncurls his hands nervously, before bringing his left up to his head to rub the back of his head. Kurapika takes pity on him and meets his eyes levelly.

“Okay.”

 

* * *

 

Leorio’s room resides at a corner of Tier 3, occupying a generous expanse of the First-Class Cabin. It opens to a small corridor, various mismatched slippers littering the entrance, despite there being a fair amount of available space in the shoe cabinet that is offset to the left side. The long end of a dining table can be seen from the door, the lacquer finish on Jarrah flashing in the light. Dust, highlighted by the sunray, settles leisurely on its surface.

“Make yourself at home,” Leorio says, gesturing lazily at nothing in particular. “I hope you don’t mind sleeping in the guest room.”

Kurapika doesn’t mind the guest room. A king single sits squarely in the middle of the room, flanked by a functional wooden wardrobe and an equally as functional lamp table with three empty drawers, save for a packet of desiccant in each. A digital alarm clock rests cosily a top of it. The room is well ventilated, large windows spanning across the far-right wall, rich red curtains of crushed velvet drawn to the sides.

He lays down in the centre of the bed, on top of the profusely stuffed blankets, arms splayed apart like a cross. His hands hang off to the sides where the mattress cannot reach, and he breathes in the smell of a slight, but not disagreeable, muskiness.

His eyes roll into his head in less than a minute.

 

* * *

 

The scent of coffee intrudes his sinuses, startling him awake. He flails in his environment, disorientated because the bed is located too far from the door, the Queen doesn’t _drink_ coffee – she despises it – and there is an absence of the reassuring weight of a gun behind his pillow. It is much too bright without the blinds, and he swallows remembering that he at Leorio’s because he failed, failed, fail –

“Oh, you’re awake,” Leorio says. He brings a mug with a gaudy graphic of a sunflower up to his face. “I made you coffee.”

Kurapika’s mouth feels disgusting, like furry caterpillars slowly shifting to the movement of his tongue.

“Thanks.”

“I didn’t know how you usually take it, so I did it how _I_ like it and added a spoon of whitener and sugar each…” Leorio trails off, unsure of his current direction.

Kurapika gazes at the painting hanging on the wall at the foot of his bed, a still life of apples on creased purple silk, wriggling his cold toes underneath his blankets.

“Thank you,” he says, as he grasps for the cup. He sips the warmth.

“It’s good.”

 

* * *

 

Leorio cooks dinner, wearing a frilly pink apron announcing ‘Year of the Pig’ in huge, swirling font. He hums a tune that Neon might’ve played on the turntable once, bopping to the beat.

The paella, with all its bright reds, oranges and greens, tastes amazing despite Kurapika needing to force it down along with a choke of laughter each time he recalls the vivid imagery.

Leorio pretends to be infuriated, with an exaggerated dip to his disapproving frown, but when it only causes Kurapika to laugh harder, he beams instead.

 

* * *

 

He lights a cigarette on Leorio’s balcony, uncaring for the unspoken rules of his cohabitation, just acknowledging the niggling need for nicotine at the back of his mind. It is persistent enough to annoy him and he places the smoking roll into his mouth letting it sit there alongside his contemplation.

The sliding door slams open with a vengeance, revealing a furiously red-faced Leorio. He grips a hand around the underside of Kurapika’s chin, thumb and fingers press into his cheeks ungently, coaxing the cigarette to fall into the palm of Leorio’s hand.

Leorio javelin throws it into the ocean.

 

* * *

 

Kurapika wakes to the gentle rumbling of the washing machine. He likes this particular model a lot; it plays a pleasant jingle at the end of its cycle, to which Kurapika dances to in the comfort of his own privacy.

He strolls slowly to the laundry room, musing at options for breakfast. He opens the gaping hatch and clumsily rolls the cocoons of wet clothing into a large plastic hamper with a wide sweep of his arms. They pop messily into the carrier, one after another.

Kurapika clips the garments with a therapeutic lightness, hands becoming accustomed to the movement as he moves down the length of the makeshift clothes line, anchored at the high points of the living room. He opens a delicates’ mesh bag. The contents are recognisable – a now greying binder.

He hesitates, then runs his fingers against the almost imperceptible stitches against the elastic cloth, thread perhaps a shade too dark, embedded with practised precision. The fraying at the hem is gone too.

He bites his lip, however, it does not deter him from smiling.

 

* * *

 

 

“I’m thinking of giving up on smoking,” Kurapika voices on an especially rainy afternoon. He is thankful for the petrichor aroma; it’s the same brand as his tribal lands’, even at sea. He sits unmoving, head rigid on his neck, holding a latent breath behind his teeth.

He misses Leorio grinning sillily around the smooth brim of his cup of coffee.

“I’m glad.”

 

* * *

 

He moisturises his hands liberally, habitually, after his shift. Kurapika eyes Leorio, questioning.

“Constant washing dries my skin out,” Leorio explains simply, shrugging.

Kurapika considers this.

“Can I have some?”

Leorio stretches his hands. Kurapika tentatively mirrors the action. His left is captured by Leorio’s fingers; they expertly massage in the ointment, soothing like flowing water slithering through the seams. He feels the faint calluses against his palm but is unable to identify their origins. There is a softness to their tough exterior and he attempts to ingrain its oxymoronic nature as accurately as he could into his hippocampus.

Kurapika’s right hand dangles uselessly at his side, fidgeting for some sort of physical grounding.

He doesn’t realise he is running circles around the rounded angle of Leorio’s elbow with his fingertips, until Leorio’s slow to a standstill.

Kurapika halts this motion unwillingly, and then holds out his right hand to Leorio’s face, in poorly concealed earnest.

“Please.”

 

* * *

 

Kurapika flies and crashes into the painting of a quaint cottage before his brain catches up to him.

Tserriednich, pretentiously bursts open the wide entrance doors and whips his arm, as if slapping the air. His blonde ends stand erect and sizzle with a foreign energy. He flings Queen Otio away from Woble’s cot like a rag doll, denying her access to her daughter.

Staggering for a foothold, Otio arches her head into the air, eyes clouding over like premature glaucoma, and cuts off the offender’s air supply. The Prince’s eyes bulge comically, as his claws at the invisible hands wringing his neck. He manages a motion in the air, similar to breaking open a beer bottle and Otio’s head flips 180 degrees backwards, a jarring crack of bone, cartilage and muscle cutting through the chaos.

Woble screams.

 _“No,”_ Kurapika thinks.

 _Stop him, stop him, confine him,_ bind _him –_

“Chain Ja–” Kurapika doesn’t identify his misstep in the whirlwind because his opponent has _his_ eyes; Tserriednich, the spiders, they’re all the fucking same with blood perpetually lodged in their orifices. It’s sickening.

Woble lets out a shrill screech, and it emits a violent shockwave midair, hurling the fourth Prince of Kakin backwards, into broken pieces of a shattered antique vase. The many windows crack in rapid succession, shattering, adorning the ground with a mosaic of glass splinters. Tserriednich is launched through a frame of aligned with broken fragments. He pierces the roughened skin of his hands for purchase in the wake of the indoors’ hurricane, ruby-red running down the pale green walls.

Kurapika propels himself towards Woble at this distraction and all but snatches her into his arms. Bundled baby safe in his grasp, he jerks around to face the repulsive Prince.

Tserriednich has a bloody smile, still leaning heavily against the damaged window, and he shows his canines leeringly at Kurapika. There is a trickle of reddish saliva at the corner of his mouth.

“Judgement chain,” Kurapika says unsympathetically. “The law is: cut off all use of your nen while on this ship. Also, do not inflict any harm on Prince Woble. Do you agree?”

 

* * *

 

Kakin’s fourth Prince slumps to the ground in a ungraceful heap. He is unbreathing.

Kurapika doesn’t look back once.

 

* * *

 

_She is draped in a luxurious purple cape and a baby’s cry is heard from the vicinity of her arms. Of course, Kurapika cannot see the baby; the woman is standing with her back to him, straight with a regal stiffness._

_The cape slips off her rigid shoulders to reveal a peasant’s attire, a sack jacket over a thin cotton dress. It is dirty at the hems with dried mud and is ill-fitting. The Queen’s,_ no, _the woman’s shoulders are slumped and slim, no attractive curves to hold the clothing’s scaffolding._

_The woman’s head turns, with a creaking akin to a door needing a good oiling, and it keeps turning beyond human limits. Her eyes are dark brown, then white, then dark brown again._

_She smells of decaying compost, sprinkled with the metallic sharpness of blood._

 

* * *

 

He lashes his arms out as he starts awake, sweeping a metre radius around him, briefly unable to find his bearings. A soft patter on the carpet floor betrays the hushed tumble of the alarm clock. Kurapika peers over the side of his bed. ‘03:12’ stares back unobtrusively, LED numerals light up a small patch of rug unblinking.

He blindly stumbles around and finds himself slipping into Leorio’s bed in the next moment. Leorio shifts to the opposite end, inhaling loudly, making space for Kurapika’s slim build and resumes breathing at his prior steady pace.

Kurapika arranges the heavy blankets over his shoulders and stills.

“Sorry.” A small voice. It doesn’t echo.

“Don’t be.”

 

* * *

 

Nasubi Hui Guo Rou allows him to see Prince Woble two weeks after her mother’s death.

Kurapika jingles the baby maraca listlessly, watching the little girl delightedly gurgle a guttural sound. She doesn’t know officially, although she probably feels the absence of motherly influence somewhere, maybe in her bones.

Tears prickle hotly at the corners of his eyes, his vision awash in bright scarlet.

“I’m,” he says, but Woble reaches out with a tiny, doll-like hand, chubby arm straining as she holds all five fat fingers to his mouth.

 _Stop._ Her light brown eyes are not dark and deep like her father’s and her mother’s.

Kurapika brings a sole index finger to her and she latches onto it, holding with all a baby’s strength.

_Stop doing this to yourself._

 

* * *

 

Leorio takes what he dubs ‘adult naps’ on the sizeable pseudo-leather sofa, legs hanging off the arm rest.

His body moves up and down as he breathes in, and out. A bright stripe of sunlight paints the back of his shirt and ripples against his arms.

Kurapika appraises Leorio’s face, soft without the usual crease between his eyebrows. He crouches down, soundlessly cupping the barely prickly slant of Leorio’s jawline.

“Thank you,” he whispers, not completely disrupting the quiet of the room. “So much.”


End file.
